Booker T. & the M.G.’s – “Medley: Sun King, Mean Mr. Mustard, Polythene Pam, She Came In Through the Bathroom Window, I Want You (She's So Heavy)” (1970)

Every February, 2 or 3 lines does its readers a solid and posts daily instead of twice a week.  It’s like having Christmas every day for a month!

This year, I decided to make the theme of my February posts overrated and underrated recording artists.  The plan was to feature equal numbers of each – there’d be a post about an overrated artist on each odd-numbered date, and a post about an underrated artist on each even-numbered date.

But my crack staff forgot that FEBRUARY 2020 HAS 29 DAYS – not 28.  And if my math is correct, 29 is not evenly divisible by two.  (In fact, 29 is a prime number so it ain’t divisible at all.)

I originally planned to do an extra “overrated” post for the 29th, but at heart I’m a happy-go-lucky, hail-fellow-well-met, look-on-the-sunny-side kind of guy.  So the negativity of having an extra overrated post really stuck in my craw.

So instead of 15 overrateds and 14 underrateds, we’re bringing you 15 underrateds and 14 overrateds.  That’s not a big difference, but in today’s divided America, I figure every little extra bit of positivity is something to celebrate.

*     *     *     *     *

Booker T. & the M.G.’s were doubly underrated.

First, they were underrated because they recorded instrumentals, and instrumentals are the Rodney Dangerfield of pop music.

Second, they were underrated because they were also studio musicians who did much of their best work anonymously.

*     *     *     *     *

The original members of Booker T. & the M.G.’s were Booker T. Jones (organ and piano), Steve Cropper (guitar), Al Jackson, Jr. (drums), and Lewie Steinberg (bass).  In 1965, Steinberg was replaced by Donald “Duck” Dunn.  (Cropper and Dunn appeared in The Blues Brothers, but we’ll forgive them for that.)

Booker T. & the M.G.’s [sic]

No fewer than 18 Booker T. & the M.G.’s instrumental singles charted on the Billboard "Hot 100" between 1962 and 1971, making them the most successful instrumental group of the sixties.  (Three of those singles made it to the top ten.)

Booker T. & the M.G.’s were also the Stax Records house band, and they played on hundreds of records by great R&B artists like Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Eddie Floyd, Sam & Dave, and Bill Withers.  You’ve heard them – perhaps without knowing that you were hearing them – on soul classics like “Hold On, I’m Coming,” “Soul Man,” and “Try a Little Tenderness.”

*     *     *     *     *

Did you know that Booker T. and his boys recorded an Abbey Road tribute album called McLemore Avenue?  (The studio where the Beatles recorded Abbey Road was located on Abbey Road in London, while the Stax Records studio – where Booker T. & the M.G.’s did much of their work – was located on McLemore Avenue in Memphis.)

McLemore Avenue consists of instrumental covers of all the songs on Abbey Road.  But instead of playing those songs in the same order, Booker T. grouped all of them except “Something” into three medleys.  (“Something” was recorded as a standalone track.) 

The McLemore Avenue album cover

The medley I’m featuring today is the final track on McLemore Avenue.  It merges four songs from the famous eight-song medley on side two of Abbey Road – “Sun King,” “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” and “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window” – with side one’s “I Want You (She's So Heavy).”  The result is really odd but really good.

Click here to listen to Booker T. & the M.G.’s “Medley: ‘Sun King,’ ‘Mean Mr. Mustard,’ ‘Polythene Pam,’ ‘She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,’ ‘I Want You (She's So Heavy)’.”  

Click on the link below to buy McLemore Avenue from Amazon: